Perseverance

ONE

"Pa! Pa! You gotta come! You gotta come now!"

Charles Ingalls drove the tips of his pitchfork into the hay, passed the back of his salmon-pink sleeve over his face to wipe away the sweat, and then looked toward the door of the barn. He'd been pitching hay for the horses when Laura's voice rang out loud and clear. It sounded like the world was endin', but he knew that was just his child's way of lettin' him know that something excitin' had happened.

White must have had her kittens.

As several of White's older 'children' darted playfully in and out of the hay, nearly tripping him, Charles shook his head and grinned. The cat had another name when she came to them, but she kept on puttin' out kittens at such rate that Caroline had started callin' her 'White'. Like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

'Course that rabbit was male and White was female, but they'd both got the joke.

Laura appeared in the doorway. Her red gingham dress was askew, her pinner apron was a mess, and her reddish-brown hair was flyin' like a flock of scattered birds. In other words, she was just about the prettiest thing he'd seen since sunrise.

"Pa," she said, breathless. "Pa..."

"Has the Reverend come to call?" he teased while lookin' at the state he was in. "I sure better change if he has..."

"It...ain't...the Reverend, Pa..." she said, breathless.

"Well, then, must be someone else mighty important."

She shook her head. "Pa, no..."

"Maybe Johnny Johnson," he offered with a tight-lipped smile.

Laura blushed red as her dress.

"Charles..."

Standin' behind Laura was the reason he'd thought his daughter was 'just about' the prettiest thing he'd seen since sunrise.

Caroline had brought him a drink about a half hour before.

Crossing to his wife, Charles wrapped his hand around the back of her head and pulled her into a kiss. Her eyes scolded him for teasing their child, but her lips didn't seem to care.

"What brings you out here again so soon, Mrs. Ingalls?" he asked, winking.

Caroline looked serious. "I think you need to look at White and her kittens."

"Oh?" he asked, sobering. "Is something wrong?" If it was, it would surprise him. That cat had kittens easier than a knife slipped through warm butter.

She inclined her head toward Laura. "It's one of the kittens."

Laura nodded her agreement. "That's what I was tryin' to tell you, Pa! Peanut needs you real bad!"

Not ten minutes old, and the kittens already had names.

"He's the runt of the litter, Charles. White's refusing to feed him."

"You gotta do somethin', Pa!"

His daughter's light hazel eyes were fastened on him with that look that said she knew he could perform the miracle needed. Charles sighed. While that look might make a man puff his chest out like a turkey in season, it was mighty hard to live up to.

The curly-haired man went to his child. Kneeling in front of her, he took Laura's shoulder in his hand. "Now, Half-pint, we've been over this before. Nature has its own way. Sometimes it seems cruel to us, but it's right to the creatures livin' in it. White's only got so much milk in her and she needs to keep it for the kittens she knows can survive. Do you understand?"

Tears streamed down Laura's face. She shook her head 'no'.

Charles rose. With a glance at his wife, he took his daughter by the hand and went over to sit on one of the unbroken bales of hay.

Caroline gave him a tight-lipped smile. "I'll go back to the girls."

He nodded. As he watched her walk away, Charles considered what he should say. The only right thing to do as a parent was to be blunt and honest. The kitten was going to die because its mother had rejected it. That was the truth and the way God had planned things. They had to accept it. No amount of belly-achin' was goin' to change it.

That's what he should say.

It wasn't so easy when he was lookin' at that little tear-streaked face.

He took Laura's hand in his. "Half-pint, the Good Book says there's a season to every thing – a time to be born and a time to die, a time to get and a time to lose."

"Why would God want Peanut to die?" she wailed.

It was hard to explain the natural cycle to a child who could only see the fluffy little bundle of feistiness and fun a kitten would grow into. Hard even for him to understand sometimes. If he was honest, he would admit it.

Charles pursed his lips. Guess he'd be confessin' come tomorrow morning.

"Maybe God wants Peanut up there in Heaven with him."

Laura sniffed and used her apron to wipe her nose. "You think so?" she asked, blinking back tears.

"I imagine," he said.

"But..."

Here it came like he knew it would.

"Couldn't we feed Peanut? I mean, we got plenty of milk from the cow. I'd give him some of mine."

Her precious little face was so earnest.

Charles nodded. "Well, we could. And maybe we could keep him alive. But he wouldn't have a mother. What do you think he'd be like without a mother to tend and care for him?"

"Charlie Parsons don't have a mother," his logical child replied.

"That's true, but Charlie's got a mind to think things through. A kitten's all instinct. All Peanut would know was that somethin' was missin' and he'd spend his life tryin' to find it."

Laura thought hard for a minute. "What if I could get his mother to accept him? Would things be all right then?"

He knew what that meant for her – endless hours of pickin' the kitten up and puttin' it at it's mother's teat and watchin' White push it away until it died.

Still, there was a lesson there to be learned as well.

"Can I try, Pa?"

Charles rose and held out his hand. "Well now, why don't you and I go look at Peanut and then we'll decide together. He might be too weak to try."

Or already dead, he thought to himself.

Laura sniffed and then rose and locked her fingers in his. As they walked toward the sod house where they'd put White until her time came, and where his other daughters were waitin', hoping for a miracle, the curly-haired man thought about the cycle of life. A man was born, he fell in love, married, and had children. They married too and had their own, and then most often he died before those children were grown. In-between was a lot of lovin' and losin'. If you had no faith in God it seemed mighty spiteful. Takin' a chance on love meant, most likely, you'd feel a lot of pain. Sufferin' was part and parcel of life. It was as predictable as the sun risin' in the east and settin' in the west. The only thing that made it bearable, was knowin' that there was a hand directing it all – that there was a time to rend and to sew, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what was planted; a time to love and to hate, and a time to die as well as live. And to know that it had all been written in God's book long before a man was born.

Even how long little Peanut would live.

They climbed the steps and went inside the sod house. Caroline was sitting at the back with Carrie on her lap. Mary was on the floor by White, who was layin' there lookin' contented and lazy with six kittens pressed up against her.

Six. That was all of them.

"Is she lettin' Peanut drink?" Laura asked as she dropped beside her sister.

"Only after the others were done," Mary replied solemnly. "There probably ain't much left."

"'Isn't', Mary," he mother chided softly.

The blonde girl nodded as she placed a finger on White's head and petted her. "Sorry, Ma."

Laura turned to look at him.

"Does that mean Peanut's gonna live, since he's got a Ma?"

Charles crouched. He reached out a finger and placed it on the tiny body, feeling the kitten's heart beating – feeling the life in it.

"There's no way to say, Half-pint. It looks like it might be up to Peanut." His eyes flicked to his wife and then back to his second daughter. "He'll have to fight every inch of the way, Half-pint, and he'll probably need your help. Even at that, he may still not make it. He's gotta have a will to survive." Charles rose to his feet. "You can't know what's inside an animal until it shows."

Or inside a man.

Her eyes were round. "Can I get him some milk from the pail and see if he'll drink that too?"

It was probably too early, but it wouldn't hurt for her to try.

Charles nodded. "Then it's time to get to your chores." His eyes took in his other daughters. "All of you."

There was a chorus of 'Yes, Pa'.

As the girls left the sod house a few minutes later, Caroline came to his side. She slipped her arm around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. "It's a hard lesson," she said softly.

He nodded as he watched the girls split up, Mary taking Carrie into the house to begin work on the next meal, and Laura heading to the barn. "But a necessary one."

"Sometimes I think," she paused, "in the city..."

He knew what she was thinking. In a city children didn't have to face daily the harsh realities of life. They didn't see animals being born and dyin', or know they were slaughtered for the table. They didn't live on the edge, knowing a grasshopper plague or storm could wipe them out. They could count on things happenin' day to day the same – gettin' up, goin' to work, bringin' home a paycheck; buyin' food at a store where there was always a ready supply.

In other words, learning to rely on yourself and not on God.

No, for all the hard things his daughters had to endure, he was glad they lived where they did and that they had a little less than enough. It would form their characters and make them into the women God intended; women who would help and support the man they loved like the one leanin' on him now. Charles kissed her lips. He really didn't have to say anythin'.

Caroline knew it all.

She kissed him back and smiled. "I should get in to help Mary."

He nodded. "After we eat, I've got to run into town to pick up those supplies at Hansen's." He was expanding the corral beside the barn. A few months back again, in the spring, they'd been blessed with a new calf. There'd be more to come and he wanted to give them plenty of room to grow.

"Did you fix that wheel on the wagon yet?" she asked, an edge to her voice.

"Going to today," he replied, a little sheepishly. She'd been at him for a few days to get it done. He'd put it off in favor of more important chores, but with Sunday comin'...

Caroline held his gaze for a moment and then nodded. She kissed him quick again and then went to join the girls. He'd go help Laura in the barn and then they'd all eat the noon meal together before he headed into Walnut Grove.

It was the time to build.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Harriet Oleson was cleaning the counter in the mercantile when the door opened and, along with a rush of air that stirred the pair of expensive white Battenberg curtains she'd just hung in the shop window, a young man blew in. He was lean and long and though well-dressed, had a gangrel sort of look about him like he didn't belong anywhere. She was instantly on alert.

She was sure he was going to rob them!

"Nels!" she called in her high-pitched voice. "Oh, Nels!"

Her husband was in the back room working. His long face appeared, peering around the corner.
"What is it now, Harriet?"

Well. He sounded like she'd interrupted him before.

Just because she'd called him in to ask him what he was thinking when he marked in the new silk stockings in at less than fifty cents each, and why in the world he had put the box on the top shelf instead of on the counter where people would see it and know they had them, and then called him back again when Charles Ingalls had come in since she just couldn't abide the man and his arrogance, Nels seemed to think she was keeping him from getting anything done. Harriet harrumphed. Her husband had actually shouted at her – shouted, mind you – as if she had done something wrong!

Her lips tight, Harriet nodded her head at the young man who was standing by the window looking out.

Nels' eyebrows jumped.

Her own winged toward her widow's peak in response. She nodded again. With a sigh, her husband dropped the sack he was holding to the floor and walked over to her.

"Whatever is the matter with – ouch!"

She'd stomped on his toe. "I'd like you," she said, her voice quiet and insistent, "to go and ask that 'customer' just what it is he wants."

Nels looked. "You mean that young man?"

"Well now, I don't see anyone else in the store at the moment, do you?"

Her husband sighed again as he turned back to the storeroom. "You ask him – "

She grabbed his collar and hauled him back.

"What?" he growled.

"Can't you see?" She kept her voice low as she nodded in the young man's direction.

"See what?"

"There's something...wrong with him."

Nels looked. He frowned and then the light seemed to dawn. "I'll say there is."

"Yes. Yes!" she said, triumphant. "What do you think it is?"

The tall thin man pinned her with exasperation. "He must not have a brain. After all, he was stupid enough to come in here."

"Oh!" she huffed as her husband headed across the store to talk to the young man who had remained where he was, by the window, looking out on the street.

Harriet watched the two of them. The stranger started and turned toward the counter as Nels asked if he could help him. Now that she looked at him more closely, he was really rather handsome in a dark sort of way – like maybe he had Spanish blood. His hair was that black that looked blue at certain angles and his skin, well, she thought it might be naturally tanned. And though he did look like a wanderer, the tatty clothes he was wearing were of a good make and cut from decent cloth. A smile tickled Harriet's lips as she continued to size him up. Perhaps he had been born to one of those manors that had lots of fine things in them, but little or no money to keep them up. Or maybe he was the secret love child of one of their lords. Something like Heathcliff in that Bronte girl's novel.

Harriet giggled. No, she was letting her imagination run away with her. She'd read one too many of those books that she kept under the counter and only brought out when other women asked.

She hadn't even admitted to Reverend Alden that they carried them!

Nels spent another minute talking to the young man and then started back her way. The stranger watched him go – revealing his long, lean face split by a pair of dark intense eyes. Then he opened the door and stepped out .

"Well?" she asked. "Who is he?"

Her husband sighed. "I didn't ask him his life story, Harriet, only if he needed help."

She scowled. Men! They just had no sense at all! "And?"

"Curiously enough, he was looking for Charles. I told him he'd find him at Hansen's if he hurried."

The young man looked to be about sixteen. "What would he want with Charles Ingalls?"

It was Nels' turn to scowl. "That's none of our business either, Harriet, and you know it!"

"It most certainly is!" She straightened her back and skirts. "Who is going to look out for this town if not fine, upstanding citizens like ourselves? Why, that boy could be a highway robber, or a con man, or maybe a ..."

"...young man looking for a friend of his father or mother, or maybe for work?" Nels sighed. "Honestly, Harriet, if you keep this up I'm going to burn those books you have hidden under the counter. They just add fuel to the fire of that overactive imagination of yours."

Harriet paled.

Nels...knew?

"Well...eh... really," she stuttered and then added, refusing to admit defeat, "you mark me, no good will come of it. Why, Charles is probably..."

"What? Plotting to rob the bank? Hiring a known assassin?" Nels cocked one eyebrow. "If that's the case, then you'd better watch out!"

Harriet fanned herself with her hand . "Well, I never..."

Nels sighed more than any man she knew. Sometimes she wondered if there was something medically wrong with him.

"Don't I wish?" he muttered at the end of it. "Now, is it all right if I go back to work?"

She dismissed him with a wave of the same hand. "Oh, go away."

"Gladly."

Once her husband had disappeared into the storeroom, Harriet crossed quickly to the door. Opening it, she stepped onto the porch and looked south toward Hansen's Mill. Charles Ingalls was just pulling out in that dilapidated old wagon of his.

He was alone.

With a frown, Harriet scoured the street looking for the stranger. She finally found the young man standing underneath a tree, masked by shadows. He was staring after Charles and as she watched, stepped into the sunlight and looked back her way.

The look on his young face surprised her. It was determined and, dare she say it, angry? The dark-haired woman pursed her lips and popped her black eyebrows. Well! Maybe Charles Ingalls was about to get his comeuppance at last. From the look of it that young man was far from being the farmer's friend.

In fact, he looked like he just might be an enemy.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Charles was on his way back to town. He'd gotten about a mile along the road to home when he'd realized he had forgotten to go to the Blacksmith's to pick up some iron rivets he needed. The sun was almost down and it meant he was going to be traveling home in the dark, but there was nothing for it but to do it. Before heading into town for church tomorrow he needed to fix the wagon wheel. He could feel it wobbling' now as he rode along at a controlled pace. It was one thing riskin' his own safety, but it was another thing entirely to risk his family's.

He just hoped the blacksmith was workin' late. If they missed church, Caroline would kill him.

With Divine permission, of course.

As he jogged along, laughin', the curly-haired man thought about Laura and her kitten. Both seemed determined that it would live. The little thing was a scrapper. He'd chuckled today when Peanut had fought and spit and shoved a larger kitten named Samson out of its way to get to its mother's milk. White seemed to take it all in stride as if that scrawny little kitten fightin' for its survival was what she'd intended all along. She didn't go out of her way to feed him, but she didn't stop him suckin' at her teat either if he earned his way.

Seemed there were still lessons for him to learn too.

He knew he tended to be a pessimist at times. The crop wasn't gonna make it. The rain wasn't gonna fall when it should. They wouldn't have enough money to make it through the winter. He snorted. Danged, if he didn't sound like some kind of sore, poutin' little kid at times! If one of his children had acted like that, they'd have gotten a kind word, then a stern one, and then had their backsides tanned for bein' such a pain! It was just hard sometimes to look at the bright side of a thing when everything looked so dark and so much was sittin' on a man's shoulders – feedin' his family, keepin' them safe, makin' sure they had clothes and more. Charles sighed as he slapped the reins against the horses' rumps and urged a little more speed out of them. He was always tellin' others they had to surrender their pride to God.

Looked like he was talkin' to the choir.

As they neared the bend that would take them north into Walnut Grove one of the horses shied and snorted. The other caught its fear and halted abruptly, rearing back and jarring the wagon. It was then he heard it. The sound he had been prayin' not to hear.

One of the hub rivets had let go and the top of the hub flange was dangling loose.

"Whoa, boys!" he coaxed. "Easy now. There's nothin' to be scared of."

Both horses were shifting back and forth. The one that had panicked first was kicking at the dirt.

"Whoa, boys! Whoa – "

Too late. With a snort and a scream, both animals bolted forward.

Charles eyes went to the wheel. The fixin's were holding, but it was only a matter of time before they let loose entirely – a short amount of time.

He kept talkin' to them, using a soothing tone, coaxing the pair to settle down, but he knew it was pointless. Panicked horses rarely listened to reason. If he didn't jump, he was gonna be thrown. He was near the edge of town now. If somethin' happened – if he hit wrong – when the wagon rolled in without him, at least someone would come looking.

Charles tried one last time, hauling back on the reins and calling out, "Whoa! Come on now, whoa!"

He heard a snap. The wagon dipped.

Before he could be thrown, Charles jumped off and rolled into the trees.